Development of a SimpleProbe real-Time PCR Assay for rapid detection and identification of the US novel urethrotropic clade of Neisseria meningitidis ST-11 (US_NmUC)

Urethritis, or inflammation of the urethra, is one of the most common reasons men seek clinical care. Sexually transmitted pathogens including Neisseria gonorrhoeae are responsible for over half of the symptomatic urethritis cases in U.S. men. Recently, clinics in Indianapolis, Columbus, Atlanta, and other U.S. cities began to note increasing numbers of men presenting with urethritis and Gram-negative intracellular diplococci in their urethral smears who test negative for N. gonorrhoeae. Many of these discordant cases, which have periodically reached highs of more than 25% of presumed gonococcal cases in some sexually transmitted infection clinics in the U.S. Midwest, are infected with strains in a novel urethrotropic clade of Neisseria meningitidis ST-11 (US_NmUC). However, no cultivation-independent tests are available for the US_NmUC strains, and prior studies relied on microbial culture and genome sequencing to identify them. Here, we describe a PCR test that can identify the US_NmUC strains and distinguish them from commensal and invasive N. meningitidis strains as well as N. gonorrhoeae. Our SimpleProbe®-based real-time PCR assay targets a conserved nucleotide substitution in a horizontally acquired region of US_NmUC strain genomes. We applied the assay to 241 urine specimens whose microbial compositions had previously been determined by deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing. The assay detected the single US_NmUC positive case in this cohort, with no false positives. Overall, our simple and readily adaptable assay could facilitate investigation of the pathogenesis and epidemiology of the US_NmUC clade

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE U.S. MEAT AND POULTRY INDUSTRIES

Market structure, concentration, meat industry, poultry industry, Industrial Organization,

CONSOLIDATION IN U.S. MEATPACKING

Meatpacking consolidated rapidly in the last two decades: slaughter plants became much larger, and concentration increased as smaller firms left the industry. We use establishment-based data from the U.S. Census Bureau to describe consolidation and to identify the roles of scale economies and technological change in driving consolidation. Through the 1970's, larger plants paid higher wages, generating a pecuniary scale diseconomy that largely offset the cost advantages that technological scale economies offered large plants. The larger plants' wage premium disappeared in the 1980's, and technological change created larger and more extensive technological scale economies. As a result, large plants realized growing cost advantages over smaller plants, and production shifted to larger plants.Concentration, consolidation, meatpacking, scale economies, structural change, Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,

Computational Efficiency: A Common Organizing Principle for Parallel Computer Maps and Brain Maps?

It is well-known that neural responses in particular brain regions are spatially organized, but no general principles have been developed that relate the structure of a brain map to the nature of the associated computation. On parallel computers, maps of a sort quite similar to brain maps arise when a computation is distributed across multiple processors. In this paper we will discuss the relationship between maps and computations on these computers and suggest how similar considerations might also apply to maps in the brain

Omnidirectional Sensory and Motor Volumes in Electric Fish

Active sensing organisms, such as bats, dolphins, and weakly electric fish, generate a 3-D space for active sensation by emitting self-generated energy into the environment. For a weakly electric fish, we demonstrate that the electrosensory space for prey detection has an unusual, omnidirectional shape. We compare this sensory volume with the animal's motor volume—the volume swept out by the body over selected time intervals and over the time it takes to come to a stop from typical hunting velocities. We find that the motor volume has a similar omnidirectional shape, which can be attributed to the fish's backward-swimming capabilities and body dynamics. We assessed the electrosensory space for prey detection by analyzing simulated changes in spiking activity of primary electrosensory afferents during empirically measured and synthetic prey capture trials. The animal's motor volume was reconstructed from video recordings of body motion during prey capture behavior. Our results suggest that in weakly electric fish, there is a close connection between the shape of the sensory and motor volumes. We consider three general spatial relationships between 3-D sensory and motor volumes in active and passive-sensing animals, and we examine hypotheses about these relationships in the context of the volumes we quantify for weakly electric fish. We propose that the ratio of the sensory volume to the motor volume provides insight into behavioral control strategies across all animals

Liquid-Flooded Ericsson Power Cycle

In this paper, the use of liquid flooding is examined to create a high efficiency Ericsson Power Cycle. The introduction of significant amounts of liquid into the compression and expansion processes of a gas leads to quasi-isothermal behavior approximating that of an Ericsson cycle. A thermodynamic model is presented and various working fluid pairs are examined under operating conditions suitable for solar thermal power generation. The Liquid-Flooded Ericsson Cycle (LFEC) can be manufactured with fixed volume ratio machinery currently mass produced for the refrigeration industry. In this manner low cost, distributed solar thermal generation can be promoted. The thermodynamic performance of the LFEC is compared to that of other power cycles proposed for solar thermal systems. It is shown that for sufficiently high component efficiencies the Liquid-Flooded Ericsson Cycle provides higher thermal efficiencies than any other power cycle currently under consideration

Thermodynamic Analysis of an Electrochemically Driven Chemical Looping Heat Pump

Electrochemical cells have been widely explored for their use in high efficiency energy systems. In this paper a novel heat pump cycle is proposed which utilizes chemical looping driven by electrochemical cells. Chemical looping is a method that has been applied to various applications such as combustion and air separation. It consists of the cycling of a substance between different chemical compositions in order to produce a desired effect. When the chemical composition of a fluid changes, various properties such as its saturation pressure will also change. In the proposed concept, the chemical looping of electrochemically active fluids was leveraged in order to generate a heat pumping effect. A number of electrochemically active liquid organic hydrogen carriers including alcohols such as cyclohexanol and isopropanol have been investigated for use in conjunction with electrochemical cells. These organic fluids were integrated into a thermodynamic model of the proposed cycle. When operating as an air conditioner the model indicated that an increase in cooling COP of over 20% could be achieved in comparison to a conventional vapor compression system using R410A

Research Notes : Selection and inheritance of nitrate reductase mutants in soybeans

Our primary objective in looking for nitrate reductase (NR) mutants in soybeans is to attempt to overcome the inhibition of nitrogen fixation by soil nitrate. The rationale depends upon blocking normal nitrate metabolism by finding defective NR mutants, thus liberating additional carbon and ener-gy for use by nodules in nitrogen fixation. Additional benefits likely to result from the isolation of NR mutants in soybeans are a) a better under-standing of normal nitrate metabolism and b) provision of easily selectable genetic markers

Comprehensive Modeling of a Chemical Looping Heat Pump with a Reverse Fuel Cell

HVAC, refrigeration, and water heating accounted for approximately 22 quads of primary energy consumed in the United States in 2018, according to US EIA. Most of HVAC&R industry still relies on vapor compression and heat-driven technologies. The development of highly efficient technologies that would significantly improve both COP and annual energy savings is an open challenge for the new decade. Among the novel technologies, the Chemical Looping Heat Pump (CLHP) combined with a reverse fuel cell has been modeled with estimates of a COP increase of over 20% relative to a conventional vapor compression (VC) cycle. However, limitations of simplified modeling efforts necessitate the development of a comprehensive mechanistic model to predict several physical phenomena for varying operating conditions and more accurately estimate performance. In this work, a charge-sensitive mechanistic modeling approach is utilized to predict the performance of the CLHP system. A thermodynamic model is coupled with a discretized fuel cell model to estimate the energy savings potential. A moving boundary model is adopted to assess the steady-state heat transfer rate in the heat exchanger. Sensitivity analyses are used to identify the system behaviors and performance